La-Z-Boy’s CFO On The Demands Facing Finance Leaders In 2021

With 2021 now underway, CFOs could possibly still be catching their breaths from the unparalleled worries and upheavals of 2020. But succeeding in 2021 and outside of demands steady movement on the component of finance leaders and their teams. In a new Q&A with Melinda Whittington, the CFO of legendary furnishings manufacturer and retailer La-Z-Boy, I asked about how the pandemic brought into better gentle the heightened expectations all over the finance chief role in modern day times. She shares how it has been elevated into a position acutely concerned with disaster management, communications, expertise growth and placing an moral illustration.

Jeff Thomson: The duties of the CFO have expanded over and above heading the organization’s finance functionality. Progressively, CFOs are dependable for location the strategic path of the firm and determining where by vital investments should be manufactured. How do you consider the CFO’s function as a leader has improved about the course of your career? How has technological know-how, like info analytics or automation, enabled the CFO function to increase?

Melinda Whittington: I generally say the CFO’s (or any finance leader’s) purpose is to recognize the organization as very well as the CEO, but then also comprehend every thing guiding the numbers! Business enterprise partnership and determination guidance are vital for a sturdy finance functionality and a robust business. Expanding that partnership and structured wondering outside of in close proximity to-phrase decisions and into lengthier-expression system is even much more highly effective. Of course, as the CFO, you have to equilibrium all of this with an unwavering eye on the “must dos” – together with excellent accounting and controls and hard cash administration. Leveraging constant enhancement and technological enhancements, like robotic system automation, are essential to improving upon performance and enabling resources to consider on new challenges.

Thomson: Covid-19 analyzed the approaches and assumptions of finance leaders across each and every market. As the CFO of a company with a globalized provide chain, how have you managed the uncertainty and disruption wrought by the pandemic? Much more broadly, how did the disaster effect your position and that of the finance operate in normal? How have you balanced brief and lengthy-term pitfalls in the deal with of a international pandemic while retaining business continuity?

Whittington: We have professional each and every intense in the shorter time the pandemic has been influencing us. First, it was working with short-term offer disruption of products coming from Asia. But by the conclusion of March, we have been looking at almost all of our business-owned shops and our B-to-B consumers fully shut down for numerous weeks. In April, we quickly shut all of our manufacturing facilities and furloughed 70% of our practically 10,000 employees, when inquiring everyone else to consider short-phrase fork out cuts.

We ultimately reduced our workforce permanently by almost 10%, to emerge leaner submit-pandemic. The future was exceptionally unsure and we took speedy action to make certain our business endured. My finance workforce was at the same time examining liquidity and pursuing new financing choices in case they were wanted, minimizing budgets, and turning our setting up target to daily funds management – anything our organization has not had to deal with in far more than a 10 years. 

Just as abruptly, when we reopened operations in May well/June, we discovered client need for home furnishings, and exclusively La-Z-Boy home furniture, at all-time highs. We shifted into development method, to guidance unprecedented need acceleration, when safeguarding the health and safety of our employees and clients. Our offer chain group jumped into motion and set in location a range of resourceful speedy and for a longer period-term answers to enhance generation. Each of these actions was supported by large-good quality fiscal details and partnership. And of class, agility is prime of mind, as demand from customers trends are most likely to change with the trajectory of the virus.

Vital to all of these important decisions is a properly-coordinated and trusting group, both of those at the total multi-functional company degree, and in the finance and accounting team. We have desired to assess every single action with good knowledge and economical projections, thinking about both equally the quick scenario, as effectively as a broad array of eventualities for the upcoming, equally optimistic and adverse. We are testing our agility and scenario setting up at an unprecedented tempo and setting up new muscle that will advantage us extensive phrase. 

Thomson: As consumers’ anticipations all over company social obligation broaden, how has your technique to disclosure management and company reporting advanced? What is your strategy to sustainability and ESG reporting?

Whittington: I am privileged to perform for a organization that has remarkably valued executing the suitable point – for our people today, our communities, the surroundings – even right before it was fashionable. Now we are functioning on how to tell our story. More than the previous few many years, we have substantially expanded our disclosure, mainly on our internet site, and we have initiated once-a-year governance excursions with fascinated traders. These have been extremely effectively obtained, and we are getting better from the opinions we acquire in these meetings as well as from what our staff is learning as a result of various seminars and study. 

Thomson: Ethics has come to be extra important in modern many years as a number of major-name providers deal with ethics scandals, typically involving the finance function. How has a code of professional ethics knowledgeable your determination-generating as a finance chief? How do you help boost ethical conduct in just your division and your wider organization?

Whittington: Ethical habits is my leading personal value, so it is a really easy translation into the company planet. Finally, you have to be equipped to sleep at night time. I believe occasionally individuals get caught in the grey area, make a very small action into inappropriate steps or very poor selection earning, and then items commence to snowball.

Eventually, no subject how dire the situation, it is improved to just deal with the information and offer with them up front. As for leading the corporation, my workforce knows that I count on everyone to act with integrity at all instances. If everyone sees a thing that raises a concern or doesn’t sense suitable, it is incumbent upon them to convey it up the chain and, if they aren’t becoming read, they require to provide it instantly to me. Which is not just fantastic for the organization, but very good for anyone who is effective for us, for shareholders and all other constituents.

Thomson: As a senior chief in a major corporation, you’re liable for not just your department’s operations but for guaranteeing that your staff members possesses the techniques needed to supply results and drive worth. How do you market specialist progress? What investments do you make in upskilling and how do you motivate workforce to purchase new competencies?

Whittington: I remarkably benefit ongoing improvement. The way you do the job in your function currently ought to be distinctive than the way you were being functioning in it a number of many years back. It’s very important to get additional successful, additional efficient and acquire on new company troubles. As a chief, it is my duty to create my persons into much better, much more successful and dynamic industry experts. A ton of finding out can take place on the task, speaking with friends, remaining coached by administration and mentors, and altering roles in just the company. Ideally, when you alter roles, you provide some thing new to the posture that will make it improved and you have a little something to learn in the function that would make you much better. We are performing to increase systems to aid our crew get in-property education from friends on tools that can make them better just about every day.

We highlight effectiveness wins, share very best methods and present issues like Excel assistance hours to assist us discover from each other. At the bigger stage, we stimulate certifications these kinds of as the CIA [Certified Internal Auditor] for our interior auditors, and the corporation supports innovative levels for robust performers. 

This article has been edited and condensed.